Subject:
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Re: Sticking my gun where it doesn't belong...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 19 Sep 2003 18:38:57 GMT
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Viewed:
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651 times
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Bruce Schlickbernd wrote:
> And if there was a revolt today against Dubya, why do you think it would not be
> a war time scenario, or that the opposition wouldn't form into an army? Or that
> the armed opposition wouldn't have come from home?
>
> And the point was that you kept harping about 1776 and saying that that was it
> for armed insurrection on a massive scale, and I was pointing out that you were
> wrong.
You know, I just don't think many people really think about the
implications of 1775 (which is actually far more relevant to this debate
than 1776, by 1776 the whole thing was well under way). How many people
have thought about the implications of a bunch of farmers (granted,
farmers far more trained in their weapons, and having trained with their
fellows than the average citizen today) stood in a ragged line at one
end of the town common while a far superior force marched down the
street. What was going through the farmers heads? Why did they feel
compelled to stand there?
I think there is one fundamental reason why we don't have armed
insurrection today: Taken as a whole, the US government is no where near
as bad as the British government in 1775, at least not within this
country (on the other hand, the Iraqi population may be feeling a bit
like the farmers of 1775 - and guess what, some of them are taking the
same actions).
On the other hand, there are some very disturbing trends. If the next
election is able to reverse some of those trends, then we will step
farther from armed insurrection. If the next election continues those
trends, we will step closer to armed insurrection.
I am pretty confident that if our government goes too far, that there
will be severe resistance. Hopefully that resistance will not need to be
armed insurrection. The good thing is that the structure of our
government does provide a lot of input for the average citizen, and
things that are really bad get the attention of enough average citizens
that they make enough noise that the politicians here (see, the check
isn't really that the "government" is so good, but that the average
person is "good"). This year in Portland we had a totally unjustified
police shooting (they let a situation get out of hand and by the time
the gun was fired, it probably was justified, but the situation should
not have got out of hand). The officer involved was punished, and we
have a new police chief. This all because the Mayor payed attention to
the voices of the citizens. Did we need armed insurrection? No, not
today. But maybe tomorrow.
I guess it all comes down to whether you believe people are inherently
good or governments are inherently good. The way I see it is that a
government is just a collection of people, and therefore has no special
claim of goodness beyond the basic goodness of people, and therefore, if
there is any basic goodness in the world (and there does seem to be
basic goodness in the world), it must be an inherent goodness of the
people. What really makes the world tick is that we have a sufficiently
similar understanding of goodness that we are able to form collective
opinions. A government is ultimately just a formalized collection of
those collective opinions. A democratic government is then superior to a
non-democracic government then because it forms that collective opinion
based on the input of more people.
Frank
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Democratic? (was: Sticking my gun ...)
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| (...) However the party system stuffs all that up by forcing members to vote "along party lines" instead of how their constituents want them to vote (except in conscience votes, which don't happen often in parliament). Note that I'm referring to (...) (21 years ago, 23-Sep-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Sticking my gun where it doesn't belong...
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| (...) And if there was a revolt today against Dubya, why do you think it would not be a war time scenario, or that the opposition wouldn't form into an army? Or that the armed opposition wouldn't have come from home? And the point was that you kept (...) (21 years ago, 19-Sep-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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